"Turkey�s European problem
Gilles Kepel
14 - 12 - 2004
The European Union�s decision to admit Turkey to accession talks is also a test of how far Turkey�s politics can and will become Europeanised and secularised, says Gilles Kepel.
The European Union announces on 17 December 2004 its historic decision on whether to admit Turkey to accession talks, opening the way to EU membership for this secular, democratic state whose population of 70 million is overwhelmingly Muslim. This is the culmination of a process of discussions between Turkey and the European Union that has been underway since 1963.
The Turkish government that is both waiting and pressing for this decision is dominated by a reformist Islamic party, the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice & Development party, AKP) whose prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, achieved notoriety (and imprisonment) in 1998 for quoting in a political speech a poem which likened the minarets of his country�s mosques to bayonets and their domes to helmets. "
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